[HN Gopher] Mastodon generates more engagement than Twitter. Why?
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Mastodon generates more engagement than Twitter. Why?
Author : rpgbr
Score : 23 points
Date : 2023-02-23 21:00 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (notes.ghed.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (notes.ghed.in)
| nabla9 wrote:
| The great thing about Mastodon seems to be that it's bad for
| promoting.
|
| Several journalists, researchers, and bloggers jumped into
| Mastodon and tried to do the usual "hot take every day" to get
| followers. It does not work. There is no vitality. Pumping hot
| air does not take off. They are really pissed that "retweet"
| feature is missing :)
|
| I have discovered several people and groups of experts who just
| do their work, discuss and share knowledge without branding
| themselves.
| dhc02 wrote:
| Just give it time. Remember, before Twitter had algorithms,
| there were third-party platforms like favstar providing
| algorithmic virality as a service. I'm sure we'll eventually
| see similar tools for mastodon, followed by those tools being
| integrated into the platform, thereby eventually ruining it.
|
| Edit: yep.
| https://twitter.com/TimHaines/status/1626002333548306432?cxt...
| kazinator wrote:
| https://norden.social/@hmans/109909653859135077
|
| Henrik Mans writes:
|
| Twitter: "Hi, we're run by a cryptofascist who reinstates the
| accounts of literal nazis while suspending those of press. We'll
| keep randomly taking away features with no notice and limiting
| your visibility until you pay us a monthly fee, which you can
| only do in a handful of countries. Vaccines are bad, the election
| was rigged, and we love Putin!"
|
| Mastodon: "Hi! You need to choose a server and our DM UX is a
| little iffy."
|
| Users: "NEVER BEFORE HAVE I FACED A CHOICE THIS HARD"
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| How obnoxious. Calling anyone remotely critical of mainstream
| media voices a fascist seems to be quite popular these days..
|
| /s
| lapcat wrote:
| 1. Mastodon is disproportionately a self-selected group of very
| active social media users. The people who cared the most about
| the state of Twitter were most likely to care enough to leave
| Twitter.
|
| 2. Twitter has a much higher number of fake and bot accounts.
|
| 3. Twitter is much older and thus has a lot more accounts that
| have been abandoned or are relatively inactive, whereas Mastodon
| has seen a recent, large influx of new users and thus has a
| higher proportion of currently active accounts.
|
| 4. Mastodon has attracted specific subsets of the Twitter
| population, rather than attracting broadly from the general
| Twitter population. For example, I've seen that software
| developers have migrated en masse. Thus, there tends to be more
| activity, because you have a relatively large collection of like-
| minded or like-interested users. It doesn't feel "lonelier" on
| Mastodon despite the overall vastly smaller user base when the
| people you know all happen to be on Mastodon. In fact, my Twitter
| feed is now a pretty lonely place.
|
| 5. As a result of all of the above, Mastodon users feel more
| comfortable posting and replying. More people you know and like,
| fewer people you don't know and don't like, not many "drive-by
| attacks". And Mastodon has technical limitations preventing a lot
| of the typical Twitter nastiness: no global search, no quote
| tweets, etc.
| itomato wrote:
| I value a Toot more than a Tweet. I can't be alone.
| abawany wrote:
| The non-manipulated output alone is worth it. When I was on
| twitter, almost every tweet seemed designed to suck on my
| emotional energy for purposes unclear (engagement?) but on
| Mastodon, things are just fun and I see things I would never
| have seen in a engagement-first/succubus model.
| user_named wrote:
| Because it's smaller and has a self selected user base
| gwern wrote:
| The evidence for this is https://www.caseywatts.com/blog/welcome-
| to-mastodon/ which is completely vacuous: a single person for an
| unspecified period measuring unspecified 'engagement' with a
| round number and no mention of how many followers cannibalized
| from Twitter or how a migration produces tons of fodder for
| discussion (eg the entire post is an advertisement/explainer for
| Mastodon) or about the general decline in Mastodon traffic post-
| exodus bump. Maybe establish that there is anything there before
| trying to explain as the will of the omnipotent Algorithm...
| fl0ps wrote:
| Usually my validation for ignoring such things is when it's
| accompanied by "forget Twitter, move here". For someone
| supposedly worried about engagement to suggest not using
| absolutely every major traffic source (no matter the numbers)
| suggests underlying bias.
| ksaj wrote:
| I think mostly it is because people join servers that basically
| cater specifically to them.
|
| For example, I'm on infosec.exchange. Needless to say, it is very
| easy for me to engage in conversations, and very easy for others
| to engage with me. In threads where people don't agree with each
| other, it still manages to not get hostile because well, we're
| all interested in the same subject even if from different angles.
|
| Also, an important feature when it comes to people who might get
| out of hand on occasion, is that you can ignore (mute) and/or
| block them for a specified period of time (versus Twitter's
| permanent-only options). I do that when people post the songs
| they are listening to in real time, because I figure they'll be
| done the song list in an hour or so.
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